Cinema
Week 8 – Humanities G125
Rasmussen College
Paige Shreeve Welle
The Art of Creating Awe
Art and Propoganda
D.W. Griffith – Birth of a Nation
Sympathetic after the Civil War to KKK and the South
Sergei Eisenstein – The Battleship Potemkin
Favorable message to the Bolsheviks and Lenin
Features a scene in which Czarist soldiers massacre innocent
people with a focus on a baby carriage.
Major Film Genres
Slapstick Comedy
Farce
Animated
Film Noir
Romantic Comedy
Screen Musical
The Western
Horror and Suspense Films
Social Issues
Documentaries and Docudramas
Fictionalized Biography
Slapstick
Comedy
Charlie Chaplin – The Little Tramp
Social Consciousness – showed the
“survivor”
Outwits bullies and villains
Works hard
Farce
The Marx Brothers
Groucho, Chico and Harpo
Animated Film
Began in the 1930s with Mickey
Mouse, Snow White in 1936
New animated films appeal to both
children and adults
Example: Ratatouille
Film Noir
1940s and 50s
Portrayed dark and gloomy
underworld of crime and
corruption
Heroes are just as disillusioned as
the villains
D.O.A
Romantic
Comedies
These have been around since the
1930s—Depression era—Escapism
films
Lots of well known actors
Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn
New RomComs
Not always a rosy ending
RomComs have gone from gender
equal to a “slacker/striver” formula
– Knocked Up
As Good as it Gets
The Musical
Dirty Dancing – no singing, just
dancing—new
Chicago
Moulin Rouge
These were not the light-hearted
musicals of the 40s and 50s
The Western
Very American and very
Hollywood!
Remain popular today
Good example of how film can
sway your opinion about
something.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid – two outlaws – you want them
to win!!!
Horror and
Suspense
Alfred Hitchcock
Luis Bunuel –Spanish Director –
1929 film Un Chien Andalou –
appeared to show an eyeball being
cut open –
Today? Saw, Paranormal, etc.
Social Issues
It’s a Wonderful Life—Frank Capra
Do the Right Thing – Spike Lee
Film Auteur
Auteur = author
Ingmar Bergman
Swedish Director 1918 – 2007
The Seventh Seal and Wild
Strawberries
Central characters wonder why
they are in this world.
Does life have a purpose?
Federico Fellini
Movies with very ambiguous
meanings – is God angry, or is God
missing from people’s lives?
Most famous movie was 8 1/2
Alfred Hitchcock
Master of Suspense
First person to make movies about
spies and murders among highly
civilized people
Real terror comes from what is
imagined by the audience before
anything is shown.
The Birds
Hitchcock
Psycho
Shower scene lasts only 45 seconds,
is composed of 78 distinct shots –
you don’t see the actual stabbing
Probably the most famous scene in
movie history
Francis Ford
Coppola
Made The Godfather Trilogy – one
of the most famous movies or
trilogies of all time.
Sins of the father condemn the next
generations to repeat the same
crimes and suffer the vengeance of
their enemies.
Main character a lot like Hamlet –
doesn’t want the life he inherits
Conventions of Film
Direction
Cinematography
Screenwriting
Sound
Editing
Art Direction
The End